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  • The problem with Facebook is that it's keeping things from you. You don't see most of what

  • is posted by your friends or the pages you follow.

  • Now pages can be business or they can be individual creators like I freaking love science or my

  • own page, Veritasium. When you post something on your personal page,

  • it only goes to a small fraction of your friends. Now if they like it and engage with it will

  • be spread to more of them, but if they don't the post basically stops there and the number

  • of people your post reached is never revealed to you.

  • Now imagine what this does to newsfeeds. Friends and family and pages that you don't actively

  • engage with will disappear over time. This usually means that people you disagree

  • with will vanish, leaving you with a newsfeed that's effectively an echo chamber of

  • self-affirming views, the things you already think and believe.

  • And don't you thinks it's possible to see a post and find it interesting without having

  • the need to actually 'like' it or comment on it? I mean, it seems weird that you need to

  • put out there every view, you need to make that an active choice.

  • You know what posts people like most of all? It's babies and weddings.

  • Does this newsfeed look familiar? Now Facebook would argue this filtering is

  • absolutely essential. The average teen has about 300 Facebook friends

  • and the average user likes 40 pages. Each day 4.75 billion posts are shared across

  • the site. That's an average of about four per user. Who is sharing all this stuff? It

  • certainly isn't me. But that means that if you are logging in

  • once per day you could be exposed to up to 1500 posts.

  • Okay, so clearly some filtering is required. The problem is Facebook is using its filtering

  • power in order to make money. And just to use myself as an example, over

  • 109 thousand people have liked my page. Thank you to those of you who have done that.

  • But the last time I shared a video on there it only went in the newsfeeds of about 9000

  • of those people. This continues the downward trend in numbers

  • I've been seing. In a recent factsheet, Facebook stated:

  • "We expect organic distribution of an individual page's posts to gradually decline over time"

  • That means that they are actively restricting the reach of posts from people like me in order

  • to force us into paying to reach the people who have already indicated that they like

  • what we do. It doesn't make sense for independent creators

  • like me or for charities or non-profits or for individual users like you. I mean, did

  • you know you could pay to promote a personal post?

  • Like that time that Bill Nye taught you how to tie a bow tie?

  • Yeah, seven dollars more and more of your friends can find out about that.

  • That to me seems crazy and desperate. Take a second and think about this. On Youtube,

  • creators are paid for every view of their content, whereas on Facebook it's the opposite.

  • Creators actually have to pay for views. How does this work? Why in these two seemingly

  • similar situations does the money flow in opposite directions? Well I've got three ideas.

  • First, people go to these sites for very different reasons. They go to YouTube to be entertained,

  • to see cool new things and to learn. In contrast on Facebook they go to catch up with friends

  • and family, to share pictures and messages. So family and friends are really the main

  • draw. Now second, on Facebook the interaction with

  • posts is very brief. So it's difficult to say how much a great page like ScienceAlert

  • or I Freaking Love Science actually brings people back to Facebook. Undoubtedly they

  • do, it's just very difficult to quantify. In contrast on YouTube every view happens

  • for minutes on a particular video. And the amount of revenue generated is known, so it's

  • easy to identify how much value is created with every view.

  • Third and perhaps most important, on Youtube the roles of creators, advertiser and viewer

  • are distinct. The creators make the videos that the viewers want to watch. The advertisers

  • make the pre-rolls and the banner ads and the majority of viewers are not also creators.

  • In contrast on Facebook the creators are treated like advertisers, they have to pay to reach

  • the viewers, and viewers themselves are also creators, so viewers are also advertisers.

  • You know, when Facebook launched the functionality that allowed us to promote personal posts,

  • one reporter commented quite astutely that we are all now advertisers. And that is the

  • problem with Facebook. We are all advertisers because Facebook can't figure out another

  • way to monetize its humongous user base. I mean, people don't click on those sidebar

  • ads because, well, they don't come to Facebook to shop for things. The click trough rate

  • is only about 0.05%. Compare that to 2% for Google Ads. Well that makes sense because

  • people actually go to Google when they want to buy things.

  • The result of Facebook's business model is a misalignment of incentives. Users just want

  • to see the best content out there but increasingly they are just being shown the content from

  • the highest bidder. The main organically shared posts are going

  • to be the ones that appeal to the lowest common denominator.

  • Plus while you're trying to hang out with your friends and family you're going to see

  • ads from big companies. In 2014 Facebook is set to launch video ads, and this from a site

  • that has basically no video content. Compare this to YouTube where the viewers

  • want to see the best videos that match their interests. YouTube wants these viewers to see

  • as much relevant content as possible, the creators want to reach as wide an audience

  • as possible and the advertisers just want to get in the middle of everything. The point

  • is the incentives of all parties are aligned. In 2013 YouTube made over 5 billion dollars,

  • most of which was paid back to the creators, the very people who make the site worth visiting.

  • Facebook made 7 and a half billion dollars but that all went back to the company and

  • shareholders, not the people who make the great content, who are mainly your friends

  • and family. I think this is a cautionary tale. The beauty

  • of social media is that it's the user who gets to control the content, who they interact

  • with and how. I mean, on Twitter they don't filter any tweets and every picture you Instagram

  • goes to all your followers, at least for now. But Facebook is taking control of what its

  • users see in order to make money from them. I thinks that's a problem because of the way

  • it's changed the incentives. I mean, Facebook has this ongoing incentive to restrict more

  • and more the organic reach of posts in order to force people to pay to promote them and

  • I think that really changes the ethos of the site.

  • But what do you think? I really want to hear what you guys think about these aspects of

  • social media and whether you are seeing a similar thing to what I am seeing?

  • Just one last thing. I don't really expect Facebook to have great revenue growth prospects

  • for the future because they have already basically saturated the whole developed world. And everyone

  • I think is using Facebook as much as they ever will which is about a half hour a day.

  • In contrast if you look at online video, people are only watching about two hours a week.

  • Compare that to over 20 hours a week of TV. So I think online video still has a lot of

  • room to grow whereas Facebook may have reached its peak.

The problem with Facebook is that it's keeping things from you. You don't see most of what

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A2 初級

Facebook的問題 (The Problem With Facebook)

  • 182 7
    kwchu 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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